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Response To Common Inaccuracy: Terrorists Target US Because of Israel

Inaccuracy: Islamic terrorists target the United States because of its relationship with Israel and its favoring of Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians. If the U.S. ended its close relations with Israel, these terrorists would no longer have a reason to attack the U.S.

Response

The hatred of the United States and the West by Islamic extremist terrorists has little to do with U.S. policy towards Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, their key “grievances” against the U.S. and the West, and their goal of establishing a theocratic Muslim state, would remain even were there no Israeli-Palestinian conflict or were the U.S. to sever its ties with Israel.

These extremists are ideologically opposed to everything the U.S.and the West stand for: democracy, modernism, freedom, globalism and diversity. While many of these groups profess allegiance to the Palestinian cause, their main gripes are with the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. support for “moderate Arab regimes” such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others that they consider corrupt and anti-Muslim.

These extremist movements recognize that the U.S. and its allies in the region stand in the way of their ultimate goal: the establishment of a theocratic, unified Muslim state spanning the region.